Prosperity and Anxiety

The age of forty is a for a man ( a woman of similar age needs to add her own) is the most-profound point in a man’s life while you balance the parameter of prosperity and anxiety in the person’s life.

If we survey human history for some thousand of years, we observe with regret that prosperity and relaxed life co-existed like a transient flash, even for a small segment of the population.

Is there any law that governs both prosperity and anxiety ?

Empirical observations immediately point out that prosperity after a threshold gives rise to anxiety. It appears that prosperity is the cause of anxiety.

A friend of mine, working in one of the largest IT companies in India, a fortyish man is highly anxious as how will be fund his post-retirement life. The ‘retirement’ age is not decided by him, or his employer, not even common sense but by Big Data ! You can substitute Big Data with astrology if you feel better in terms of cognitive resonance.

Forty years ago, i..e when I was born, forty-ish Indian men were not having so much tokens of prosperity. However, they were not that much anxious about post-retirement life because of one irreplaceable and infinitely powerful placebo : pension.

Pension meant two things to them, two things in future which are the root cause of anxiety today : lifelong employment and post-retirement guaranteed income in the form of pension.

From this historical analysis, I have recommended my ‘anxious’ friend the following Rx – which can be called a Wordsmith Placebo for Anxiety regarding post-retirement for 40+ Indian salary-men:

Your anxiety is inversely proportional to various guarantees – real, un-real or fake, as long as your mind has a perceived comfort

You shall not be perceiving any amount of prosperity or anxiety as satisfactory till a second before your death, while your wisdom remains constant.

As an actionable attempt to wisdom, buy a large tin trunk. Put INR 10 (2014’s valuation) for each advert you see in a day inside the tin-trunk and keep it under lock and key. You can make a cut at the top where you insert the note or coin.

Do this for 6 months.

Have faith that tin and the silver of the note or the coin will miraculously transform into something you have no idea.

While anxious, think of the tin-box destiny you have.

There is one component which I missed earlier. Wisdom. Since 20 centuries and starting from geniuses like Socrates could not ‘define’ it, I am not going to make myself a fool by attempting it. Instead, I shall ask you to consider the following arithmetic – simple yet devastating :

Calculate the amount of cash you shall need after 20 years per month (in 2034 year of the Lord) – living + delaying death (medication + hospitalization + psychologist + CC TV + armed security. Let us call this as INR X per month ( 30 days)

Now interpolate everything for next 20 years and find out the amount you need to save / invest / beg / borrow / steal / do insider trading / organ harvesting, in short anything to arrive at this – let us call this INR Y per month

Now, think hard. Be hard. No mercy allowed. Don’t tell me but consider what is net income per month. Let us call this INR Z per month.

This whole system is such designed that unless there is a ‘reset’ or ‘reboot’, the following relationship is established, as sure as Euclid’s fifth postulate

INR X (in Rs value of today) = k * INR Z k >> 1

INR Y (in Rs value of today) = w * INR Z w>> 1

Here k and w are global constants and you cannot individually influence their values for all time just like you have no influence, simply on your own the exchange rate of USD and INR.

If you interpret the above 2 equations, following follows immediately, again as logically as Euclid’s achievements which tormented us in high schools in the form of theorem, premises and corollaries

If you take the above equations seriously, you need to invest your whole income for the future and may even need to borrow some. Hence, mathematically speaking, to decrease your anxiety to live in a prosperous manner in 2034, you should be living till 2034 without spending a single Rupee. In non-mathematical words, the only non-anxious man available now for a future 20 years head is a dead man.

Since it is a mathematical impossibility to escape this conclusion and you surely desire to live, it is best now to fudge the mathematics. This can be done by assuming that global constants k and w will somehow, miraculously favour you although there is not a single such instance of this.

Courage ! If you have read so much, it is not gentle to leave you without any aid. Remember the tin-box. Remember the huge notes and coins making it heavy. This is your resource, your hidden wealth.

If you are laughing now, it means that this laughter is either triggered by innate wisdom in you or you are not seriously considering your future.